Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Evans) to questions without notice asked today.

I would like to make a few remarks about this Rudd government budget. This is just another big-taxing big-spending Labor budget—more debt, no hard decisions and no plan for real action. On the whole, this budget is uninspiring and has almost no unexpected announcements. It is totally unimaginative. It is a shameless deception, operating on the basis of new taxes and unrealistic expectations of the economy. It provides little in the way of benefits to the people of Australia. The budget confirms that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan are addicted to spending and are allergic to tough decisions. As I said, this is just another big-taxing big-spending Labor budget containing no serious reform.

The budget’s return to surplus is predicated on a great big new tax on Australia’s resources sector. This tax is a dagger in the heart of the Australian economy, putting major projects at risk and sending jobs offshore as well as weakening the superannuation of many thousands of average Australians whose superannuation funds have been invested in resource stocks. The Resource Super Profits Tax is a tax on so-called superprofits. There is no doubt in my mind that this supertax will kill the goose which has been laying the golden eggs for the Australian economy. The ALP likes to think that it was their stimulus package that saved Australia from recession, but it was not really that; it was China coming back into the resource sector in the second and third quarters of the last year and improving our balance of trade. If that had not happened, Australia would have gone into recession, notwithstanding any of the policies of the Rudd government. There is no doubt that what is happening in the resource sector with this supertax will mean that we will have projects not going ahead. We are going to see projects deferred and overall investment in mining decrease.

Already we have seen doubt cast over the $200 billion expansion of Olympic Dam, Santos deferring a decision on a $15 billion LNG export terminal in Gladstone, Xstrata suspending a $30 million regional exploration program, and Origin Energy predicting increases in domestic energy and fuel prices. All of that is a consequence of this budget of the Rudd government. In addition, we have levels of debt which now mean that the government has to pay something like $700 million a week for the next three years to cover the cost of the deficit. That in itself will put upward pressure on interest rates and the cost of living for Australian families. The cost of merely servicing our interest repayments is $4.6 billion in 2010-11 and it increases to $6.3 billion in 2011-12. The peak debt bill of $93.7 billion will be the amount owed by the Australian people to pay for Kevin Rudd’s spending spree.

The government is still spending $500 million on its flawed school halls program as well as on other programs from their flawed stimulus package. The government’s promise of a $661 million investment for skills rebadges the $601 million of existing spending, including a $456 million cut in the Productivity Places Program. Funding to trade-training centres in schools in this budget is set to be slashed considerably while we see the government spending millions and millions of dollars on unnecessary advertising for government services. (Time expired)